During the past decade, the number of restaurants selling authentic mexican-style food has increased dramatically. Shreaded meat is used extensively in such food, and the shredding has heretofore been done manually. As a result of the burgeoning Mexican food business, there now exists a commercial demand for a compact, reliable, low-cost meat shredder capable of producing uniformly-shredded meat filling for tortas (sandwiches), tacos and burritos. Ideally, such a shredder would have a self-cleaning comminuting surface and a means to prevent the cleaning mechanism from jamming if a bone fragment or rigidly trapped meat shred is encountered.
There is much prior art in the field of shredding and grating devices. U.S. Pat. No. 69,150, issued to C. Worden on Sept. 24, 1867, discloses a nutmeg grater comprising a reciprocating comminuting surface slideably mounted between the side rails of a vertically-inclined frame. U.S. Pat. No. 3,831,886, issued to Duane Phillips on Aug. 27, 1974, discloses a cheese grater having a reciprocating comminuting surface. A U.S. Pat. No. 3,709,441 issued to Hans Hessner on Jan. 9, 1973 discloses a machine for disintegrating cellulose pulp sheets. This machine is of interest because of the comb plates which sweep and clean the parallel rows of teeth on the comminuting surface.